Every office swears it will take the Tally backup “daily”. Almost none do — until the disk dies during return filing. Automate it once with GoodSync and the promise keeps itself.
🎥 The job setup and Auto scheduling are demonstrated in the video — this guide applies them to the folder your business runs on
Tally data is not one file. A company's data is a folder full of interlinked files that Tally updates constantly while anyone is entering vouchers. That single fact drives this whole guide: a file-copy backup like GoodSync's is the right tool — if it copies the folder when Tally is quiet, keeps yesterday's copy safe from today's mistake, and has been proven to restore. Set it up in this order and your accounts data stops depending on somebody remembering.
The job that protects the business — design on one screen
Job: Tally Nightly Backup
Left : C:\Users\Public\TallyPrime\Data
Right: E:\TallyBackup (external disk)
Type : Backup Left to Right (1-way)
Deletions propagate: OFF
Save replaced files: MULTIPLE VERSIONS
Auto : Daily 20:30 - after office close
👆 Every line of this design earns its place in the steps below — especially the two most offices get wrong: copying while Tally is open, and letting deletions propagate into the only backup.
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Step 1 — Find the Real Tally Data Folder
Do not guess the path. In TallyPrime, open the company selection screen and check the data directory shown for your company — commonly under C:\Users\Public\TallyPrime\Data, with each company in a numbered subfolder. Tally.ERP 9 typically uses its own Data folder inside the Tally installation directory
Back up the whole Data folder, not one company's subfolder — the parent holds every company, and tomorrow's new company is then protected automatically
The folder you want contains many small files with names like TallyPrime... data files and a company folder per 5-digit number — if you are looking at a single neat file, you are looking at the wrong place
Write the exact path in the job. Guessing C:\Tally and syncing an empty legacy folder is a real and common office tragedy
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Step 2 — The Golden Rule — Tally Must Be Closed
This is the step that decides whether your backup is a backup:
Tally writes its data files continuously and in groups while vouchers are entered. A copy taken mid-write can capture half an update — and such a copy may open with errors or silently wrong balances
GoodSync's shadow-copy ability can copy many open files, but a consistent copy of an accounting database is not guaranteed by any file copier while the application is mid-transaction. Do not gamble the accounts on it
So the schedule is set for after office hours — and the office rule is: the last person out closes Tally. Put both in writing; either alone fails
If your office genuinely works in Tally around the clock, take the automated copy anyway as a second layer, but keep a proper closed-Tally backup at least weekly
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Step 3 — Build the Job the Safe Way
Job type: Backup Left to Right (1-way) — Left is the Tally Data folder, Right is the destination on an external disk or another PC, never just another folder on the same disk
Propagate Deletions: OFF — if someone deletes a company or the source folder is emptied by mistake, the backup must not obediently delete itself in the same run
Save deleted/replaced files: ON, multiple versions — yesterday's good copy must survive tonight's bad one. This is the setting that turns a corrupted-Friday discovery into a restore-from-Thursday
Add a second job to a cloud destination (Google Drive via GoodSync, for example) once the local job proves itself — the external disk and the building can be lost in the same incident; the cloud copy cannot
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Step 4 — Schedule It, Then Prove a Restore
Job → Options → Auto → On Schedule: daily, after closing time, on the PC that holds the Tally data — and confirm that PC is left on until the job's time has passed (the most common failure of this entire design is a PC switched off at 6 pm for a 8:30 pm job)
Within the first week, do the test nobody does: copy last night's backup into a spare folder, point Tally at it as a test (or open it on another machine), and confirm the company loads with correct balances
A backup that has never been restored is a rumour. This ten-minute test is what graduates it into a system
Glance at the job list weekly — the job should show a fresh successful run every day. Silence in that list is your early-warning system
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Step 5 — Know What This Backup Is, and Is Not
A GoodSync copy of the Data folder restores by copying the folder back to the same location — it is the same data in the same format Tally uses live
It is not the same thing as Tally's own backup feature, which produces a single backup file (.tbk in ERP 9 days; TallyPrime uses its own backup format) restored from inside Tally. Both are valid; they are different artefacts
Sensible offices keep both: GoodSync's automatic nightly folder copy for zero-effort protection, and a manual in-Tally backup taken before big events — year-end closing, a Tally upgrade, a data split — stored separately
And the boundary no backup crosses: if the source data was already corrupt at copy time, every copy is corrupt too. Versions are your defence — the older copies are why Step 3 keeps several
🔴 The two failure stories behind this guide: the office whose “backup” was a 2-way sync that deleted the backup the same evening the PC's disk was wiped — and the office whose copies were all taken at noon, mid-entry, and restored with errors. One-way job, deletions held back, versions on, Tally closed, after hours. The video shows the job and schedule screens; this guide just aimed them at the folder your business runs on.
🎥 Watch the Complete Video
Watch the job creation and Auto scheduling in the video, then build this exact Tally job while the steps are fresh.
Can GoodSync back up Tally data while Tally is open?
Technically it can copy the files, especially with shadow copies — but the copy may catch Tally mid-write and restore inconsistently. Accounting data is the worst place to test that luck. Schedule the job after Tally is closed for the day; if daytime copies also run, treat them as a bonus layer, never the primary backup.
Is copying the Data folder the same as Tally's own backup?
The result protects the same data, but the artefact differs. Tally's own backup makes a single backup file restored from inside Tally. A GoodSync copy is the live data folder itself, restored by copying it back into place. Keeping both is not duplication — the in-Tally backup is ideal before upgrades and year-end work, the automatic copy is what saves you on an ordinary bad Tuesday.
The backup PC is switched off at night. When should the job run?
Then the honest schedule is the last working moment, not the night: run it on folder connect or at a fixed time like 18:45 while the office is still in, with Tally closed as the final task of the day. A perfect schedule into a powered-off PC protects nothing — pick the best time that reality allows and verify one real run.
This guide is based on the Technical Anshu GoodSync Explained video • Stuck on any step? Ask in the video comments — you will get a reply there 🙏